Bad Ice-Cream is an action game released in flash on December 10, 2010. The player controls an Ice Cream Based Character trying to collect all the fruit in each of the forty levels while defending themselves from enemies.

Levels

Bad Ice-Cream has forty different levels. The player has to collect all the fruit on a level. Some fruits act differently than others. There are usually two or more types of fruit to collect in each level. When the player collects all of one fruit, and they still have other fruit left to collect, that fruit will teleport onto the stage.

Level 38

This level has 2 ducks and the player needs to collect 21 lemons and 1 pineapple.

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Nitrome - Bad Ice-Cream - Level 38

Level 39

This level has invisible blocks and 2 pot creatures and the player needs to collect 20 bananas, 20 grapes and 16 kiwifruits.

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Nitrome - Bad Ice-Cream - Level 39

Level 40

This level has hot tiles and 4 ducks and the player needs to collect 12 grapes and 4 pineapples.

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Nitrome - Bad Ice-Cream - Level 40 (Last)

Ending

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The three flavoured ice cream characters are in three separate cones, with a wafer bar on the side of the chocolate ice cream's head, a strawberry for the the pink ice cream, and a cherry for the vanilla ice cream. The cones are in a floor made of fruit, along with confetti falling.

Enemies

Enemies appear on every level of Bad Ice-Cream, attempting to flatten the Ice Cream Character while it collects fruit. While they cannot be defeated or rid of in each level, enemies can be trapped, turned around or slowed down by the Ice Cream Character's power to smash and create lines of ice blocks.

Green troll - A green troll that walks around the level. It changes direction when reaching a wall or ice block.

Black & white cows - They act almost exactly like the green troll, except they can change direction randomly anytime.

Orange squid - An orange squid which smashes blocks with its arrow like horn atop its head. It will follow the player and will destroy ice blocks to get to the player when needed.

Pot creature - A creature with the head of a pot. It has two phases: for six seconds, the pot moves randomly and slowly, but in the next six seconds, the pot chases the player, moving much faster than the first phase.

Log man - A creature looking like a log that usually walks around randomly, but when the player is on the same row or column as the log, it will roll quickly towards the player.

Green squid - Just like the orange squid, it is able to break ice and follow the player, but moving faster and able to break all ice blocks within its radius instead of just one block.

Blue cows - Walks around levels just like other cows, except it chases the player. They move faster than the orange squid.

Ducks - They can fly over any ice blocks, as opposed to breaking them. They also follow the player.

Jumping ball towers - They are three ball-like creatures the occupy two squares and they hop around chasing the player. They are slow, but occasionally they dig a hole to go underneath the ice and reappear at a different random location.

Blue squid - Just like other squids, they chase the player, but this squid is able to break a whole row/column of ice at the same time.

Yellow cows - The fastest type of cow. Also chases the player and is slightly faster than the player. Rarely, they can jump on ice blocks, and very rarely another block type.

Interactive objects

Hot tiles - hot tiles melt the players' ice.

Arrow tiles - arrow tiles change the direction of the created ice blocks.

Campfires - campfires are dangerous because it can melt the ice cream character. They can be put out by freezing them with ice, but after breaking the ice, the campfire starts burning again after a few seconds.

Fruit

Fruit must be collected on each level in order to pass it. Each type of fruit has its own sort of personality. Although some fruits remain stationary until picked up, others move around, sometimes at a very quick pace.

Bananas, Grapes, Watermelons, Lemons, and Oranges are all stationary fruits.

Kiwifruits move around randomly but are slow and easier to capture.

Strawberries also move around randomly but are slightly faster than Kiwifruits.

Pineapples will try to move away from the ice cream character and are faster than Strawberries. They can also fly over walls to avoid being frozen.

Pears also move away from the ice cream character, and are a lot more difficult to pick up.

Cherries can disappear and teleport to a random different location on the board so the best thing to do is to freeze them and then pick them up.

On February 19th 2013, Bad Ice-Cream was made Nitrome Touchy compatible, allowing up to four players to play on one screen at the same time. The Touchy screen displays a D-pad with a skin related to the character the player has selected.

Glitches

Occasionally, if the player is creating and breaking ice blocks rapidly, the animations will be reversed.

Unused content

When Bad Ice-Cream was updated with Nitrome Touchy support, the game was also updated to allow four people to play on the same computer with using Touchy, however, the game nowhere specifies that it is possible to play with four players on the same computer without using Touchy.

Player 3 can be enabled by pressing the key, and can be controlled with the keys, the key used for creating or breaking ice.

Player 4 can be enabled by pressing the numeric keypad key, and can be controlled with the numeric keypad keys, the numeric keypad key used for creating or breaking ice.

Development

Reception

Trivia

This game, along with Hot Air 2 and Skywire 2, is one of the few Nitrome games to include the ability to choose the character's appearance.

Level 20 of Bad Ice-Cream makes a reference to Pac Man games, this reference likely a reference to how the game is very Pac Man-like.

Bad Ice-Cream is probably based of Square Meal, as many enemy classes and actions performed in Bad Ice-Cream are also performed in Square Meal. This game might be a substitute for the forgotten Square Meal sequel - Square Meal 2. Similarities between the two games include:

How the main characters of both games have the ability to fire blocks.

Both games have a level where the blocks are arranged in a way they spell the word "Nitrome".

The behaviour of the pot creature appears to be recycled behaviour from the Weresquare, the Weresquare being an enemy intended to appear in Square Meal 2. The Weresquare would exhibit almost the exact behaviour of the pot creature.

Bad Ice-Cream is seen from a similar perspective as Square Meal.

It is never established in the game why the Ice cream characters are referred to as "bad", and why the game's graphics are so pixelated, although its pixelation may be so that the game looks like an arcade game, as this would mimic how Pac-Man is an arcade game (Bad Ice-Cream and Pac-Man have many similarities).

References

↑Dave Cowen on Twitter:
[1]: Bad Icecream just been released by Nitrome! The festive music is inspired by Icecream vans!, 10 Dec 10, retrieved 28 Nov 16.